US Politics

Liz Cheney was purged by the cult of Trumpism. Who is next?Richard WolffeThere’s only one purge the country really needs, and that is one that goes all the way to Mar-a-Lago Liz Cheney is both the most coldly calculating and the most principled politician in the land. At least, that’s what Liz Cheney and a whole host of political pundits would have you believe.How else can you explain her suicidal mission to confront the all-powerful, almost-indicted former president who trashes the Espionage Act as easily as the constitution.Of course she stands for democracy, free and fair elections, and all the rest of that ballyhoo. But her resounding defeat in Tuesday’s primary in the near-empty state of Wyoming must mean Something More.So Liz Cheney is obviously, naturally, running for president. Or at least running to stop Trump becoming president. Or at the very, very least, running to become Abraham Lincoln.“The great and original champion of our party, Abraham Lincoln, was defeated in elections for the Senate and the house before he won the most important election of all,” Cheney said in a concession speech that sounded more like the kickoff of a presidential campaign.“Lincoln ultimately prevailed. He saved our union and he defined our obligation as Americans for all of history.”Stirring stuff. But as campaign strategies go, Cheney’s path to the presidency is even less likely than Lincoln’s. Two years ago she won her Republican primary with 73% of her party, and the general election with 69% of the state. This week she failed to crack the 30% mark.Losing more than 40 points of support among your own voters in your home state does not represent a strong foundation for a national campaign.Yes, it’s true – to echo Ronald Reagan’s quip about the Democrats – that Liz Cheney did not leave the Republican party; the party left her.But the Fateful Tale of Liz Cheney is not about whether the Trumpist fever will ever break on the right wingnut fringe of American politics. It’s not a measure of whether Trump is stronger or weaker, closer to prison or the presidency.This story is about the animating nature of Trumpism: the lifeblood of the cult itself. It may have no principle or purpose, but it sure knows how to keep itself busy.In a traditional cult, public adoration of the iconic leader might be enough to keep the mob together. And yes there are plenty of grotesquely Trumpy memes polluting the internet.But this curiously pigmented icon represents a perpetual test for his loving fans and the elected officials who pander to them. Beyond the hush money to porn stars, there is the cozying up to foreign dictators and the nuclear secrets in his basement. Ideology and consistency are almost entirely absent.If you stand for nothing, what are your followers to stand behind?Trump is the least lawful lover of law and order. He is both pro-choice and anti-abortion, pro-outsourcing to China and anti-trade with China, a hawk against Iran and a dove towards Russia, an American nationalist who somehow marries foreigners and buries them on his golf course.This presents something of a challenge to the lickspittles who follow him. You can wait for the latest pronouncement and endorsement, but it’s hard to show your undying enthusiasm for such an unprincipled, unpredictable and untruthful man.That’s why every good cult of personality needs more than a test of loyalty. It desperately needs a good purge. It lives and breathes with the energy of the eternal hunt for the enemy within.Mussolini purged tens of thousands of Italians from his fascist party in the middle of the war for transgressions that ranged from refusing to join his militias to being only lukewarm in enthusiasm for the little man. Peron embarked on a purge of his own party around the same time in Argentina, before his Peronist successors extended the purge in their dirty war against leftists a few decades later.It’s not enough just to love the great leader. You need to demonstrate that love by finding your secret enemies and expunging them from the cult.That’s how a charlatan like Harriet Hageman can seek redemption in Wyoming. Just six years ago, Hageman was – like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and the rest of those principled, family values conservatives – disgusted by Donald Trump.She fought hard to stop his nomination, well after he had won the primary contests of 2016. The party would be weakened, she argued, by “somebody who is racist and xenophobic”. Now she says he is “the greatest president of my lifetime”.At this rate, there won’t be enough superlatives to shower on the DeSantis administration.It’s no coincidence that the power of the purge was a feature of Trump’s time in office. According to Jared Kushner’s execrable new memoir, Breaking History, he was forced to purge several figures in Trump’s inner circle of hell, including a couple of chiefs of staff, a few political strategists and a secretary of state.This is something of a travesty for the true Trumpists, such as Peter Navarro, a trade adviser whose grasp of rational thought is as shaky as his grasp of international economics. Navarro describes Kushner as the true rat in the kitchen, or as he puts it, a “run-of-the-mill liberal New York Democrat with a worldview totally orthogonal to the president he was supposed to serve”.The great orthogonal irony of the purging of Liz Cheney is that this kind of sack-based ferret fight was perfected by one Dick Cheney during the previous Republican presidency. It was old man Cheney whose cabal of loyalists did so much to undermine the technocratic Republican establishment so that he could happily invade Iraq in a cakewalk. That was before they turned on one another for their sheer incompetence.Party purges are hard to sustain without a Stalinist grip on power. Instead they tend to consume themselves in the shape of a circular firing squad.Say what you like about Trump’s threat to democracy, but right now the purger-in-chief is consumed with uncovering the rat who told the world about his secret stash of nuclear secrets.It could have been the Secret Service. It could have been the domestic help. Or it could be someone even closer to Trump.One thing is clear: the purge that ended Liz Cheney must not stop in Wyoming. For the sake of our democracy, it needs to go all the way to Mar-a-Lago.People say there’s an old New York Democrat down there who doesn’t believe half the things that come out of his own mouth.
Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist
TopicsUS politicsOpinionLiz CheneyDonald TrumpDonald Trump JrRepublicanscommentReuse this content More

Democratic boot camp: party intensifies local tactics ahead of midtermsDemocratic groups are training candidates up and down the ballot in the hopes that a successful voter turnout will help limit losses this fall Democrats knew going into this midterm election campaign season that they would have their work cut out for them. History shows that the president’s party usually loses House seats in the midterm elections, and Joe Biden’s approval rating has been underwater for almost a year.But that does not mean that Democrats are giving up. Despite the grim forecasts of a Republican shellacking in the midterms, Democratic groups have doubled down on training candidates to compete up and down the ballot in November. Party leaders have expressed hope that teaching these candidates how to tailor a campaign message to their communities’ concerns and execute a successful voter turnout operation can help Democrats limit their losses this fall.Democratic ads boosted extremists in Republican primaries. Was that wise?Read moreOne of the groups leading those efforts is the National Democratic Training Committee (NDTC), which coaches candidates and their staffers on the best strategies for managing successful campaigns. The NDTC has held more than 150 trainings this year, both virtually and in person, and 8,000 participants have joined the sessions.“This all goes back to our core mission, which is lowering the barrier of entry for anyone who wants to get involved in Democratic politics and our belief that Democrats need to be preparing and building for long-term power,” said Kelly Dietrich, NDTC’s CEO and founder.NDTC’s bootcamp training sessions instruct candidates and their staffers on everything from building personal connections with voters to executing a successful “get out the vote” strategy. Ebony Lofton, who is running to be the mayor of Dumfries, Virginia, has attended several NDTC trainings, and she said the advice she has received has already paid dividends on the campaign trail.“It’s important to me, as someone who doesn’t have a huge staff, to just have some idea of the direction I’m going,” Lofton said. “You have so many other people from all over the country who are providing nuggets – like someone told me about [getting] signs on the cheap, from the chat in one of the trainings I had – and I’ve been using them, so it’s just been great all around.”While much of the national conversation around the midterm elections has focused on control of Congress, Dietrich said that Democrats need to be paying just as much attention to state and local races like Lofton’s.“We all focus on these big and sexy races of running for Congress, but it’s only a couple of dozen of competitive races,” Dietrich said. “There are literally hundreds of thousands of state [representatives], city council, school board [candidates] that are running.”Dietrich advises trainees running in those local races to carefully consider the issues affecting their communities, and then craft a campaign message around those concerns. For many candidates, that strategy means addressing the way that rising prices have constrained family budgets in recent months.In July, the annual rate of inflation hit 8.5%, which was slightly down from a month earlier but still close to a 40-year high for the US. A CNN poll conducted last month found that 75% of Americans consider inflation and the cost of living to be the most important economic problem facing their family.“When you’re running in those local communities, the national mood and national environment can affect your race. But you need to be talking about what matters in your community,” Dietrich said. “If inflation is top of mind, how does that affect your community?”James Reavis, an NDTC trainee who is running for a seat in the Montana house, said voters have told him that their top concerns are the rising cost of housing and the state’s high property taxes.“I’ll run on tax issues all day because that’s what the constituents are talking about,” Reavis said. “So I’m still listening to the constituents, and that’s my number one driver.”During the NDTC trainings that Reavis has attended this year, he has been able to talk to other Democrats in traditionally Republican states about the best tactics for reaching out to reluctant voters.“There were lots of people on that phone call that were like me, which were people that were running in red states, and we were talking about the challenges that we have,” Reavis said. “We really have an uphill battle in places like Montana. If you have an R next to your name, you’re doing pretty good. You’re already a step ahead of the game. But if you’ve got a D next to your name, you’ve got to work really hard.”The importance of helping state legislative candidates like Reavis has been thrown into stark relief for Democrats in the past couple of months. After the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in June, individual states have been able to ban abortion access, and a number of Republican-led states have already done so.The end of Roe has shifted the conversation among voters about the upcoming election, said Donna Dill, an NDTC trainee and campaign staffer for a Democratic candidate seeking a seat in the Texas house. After the supreme court overturned Roe, abortion became illegal in Texas under a 1925 law.“We’re in Texas, and we’re in the fire,” Dill said. “What we’re trying to do is reach out to young women because they’re the ones that are going to bear the consequences of the law.”Dill and her team have pointed to Texas’s abortion ban as a devastating example of the importance of electing Democrats to the state legislature, and she said the NDTC trainings have helped guide her efforts in reaching out to right-leaning voters who may have concerns about the law.“There’s a lot of Republicans in Texas that understand that the way our state government is moving is not in a good direction for the state,” Dill said. “We’re trying to make inroads with them.”Reavis agreed that abortion has become a more prominent issue in his race, but he emphasized that kitchen-table issues like rising prices were still dominating voters’ attention.“The constant message down here in Montana has been the rising price of housing, property taxes [and] public safety,” Reavis said. “Those are still the top two or three issues. Those haven’t changed.”With that in mind, Congress’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act has provided a boon to Reavis’s campaign. The spending package, which Biden signed into law on Tuesday, includes provisions on limiting Medicare recipients’ prescription drug costs and investing in renewable energy to reduce America’s planet-heating emissions.“President Biden gets a lot of complaints down here in Montana. After the news came out about the Inflation Reduction Act, those complaints really dropped,” Reavis said. “When they’re delivering solutions up at the national level, that makes it easier for us down here to work on those state issues.”The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act was one of several recent victories for Biden and his party. On Wednesday, Biden signed the Pact Act to expand healthcare benefits to millions of veterans. A week before that, Biden announced the death of the al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who helped coordinate the September 11 attacks.Those accomplishments, combined with concerns over the end of Roe, appear to have bolstered Democrats’ midterm prospects. Earlier this month, Democrats surpassed Republicans on the generic congressional ballot for the first time this election cycle, according to FiveThirtyEight.Although there are still three months left until election day, recent developments in Washington have made Reavis and other NDTC trainees more optimistic.“In the last two weeks, I have felt some wind being lifted in the sails,” Reavis said. “Because we are getting things done at the federal level and we’re working really hard at the state level, I’m feeling really excited about the midterms.”TopicsDemocratsUS midterm elections 2022US politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Mike Pence condemns Republicans’ attacks on FBI over Trump searchSearch of Mar-a-Lago came as part of an investigation into Trump’s handling of classified material during his presidency Former vice-president Mike Pence condemned attacks against the FBI by Republicans after federal authorities searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property.Republicans have been reacting with outrage over the FBI’s 8 August search of Trump’s Florida home which came as part of an investigation into his handling of classified material during his presidency.“I…want to remind my fellow Republicans we can hold the attorney general accountable for the decision that he made without attacking the rank-and-file law enforcement personnel at the FBI,” Pence said on Wednesday at New Hampshire’s Saint Anselm College.“The Republican party is the party of law and order. Our party stands with the men and women who serve on the thin blue line at the federal, state and local level. And these attacks on the FBI must stop,” he said.Fears of violence against law enforcement officials have been growing since the search as federal authorities warn that it ignited extremists across the country.“The FBI and DHS [Department of Homeland Security] have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion,’” according to an internal intelligence memo that was widely shared with law enforcement officials of varying levels across the country.Last week, an armed man was killed after attacking an FBI office in Cincinnati with an AR-15-style rifle and a nail gun.On Sunday, a man drove into a barricade near the US Capitol in Washington DC, fired several shots into the air after his vehicle ignited, and then shot himself to death, according to police.“Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police. And the truth of the matter is, we need to get to the bottom of what happened. We need to let the facts play out,” said Pence, who alongside Trump, is considering a 2024 presidential campaign.“This unprecedented action does demand unprecedented transparency,” he added, saying that he would call on Attorney General Merrick Garland to fully disclose the reasons behind the recent search.The former vice-president also said that he has not ruled out testifying before the January 6 select committee that is currently investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn and delegitimize the 2020 election results.“If there was an invitation to participate, I would consider it…I would have to reflect on the unique role that I was serving as vice-president… “It would be unprecedented in history for the vice-president to be summoned to testify on Capitol Hill. But, as I said, I don’t want to prejudge ever any formal invitation rendered to us.”TopicsMike PenceDonald TrumpUS politicsUS elections 2024newsReuse this content More

Today, he’s in New Hampshire, promoting conservative policies while calling on fellow Republicans to hold off on attacking the FBI and signaling a willingness to talk to the January 6 committee. Next, he’ll be in Iowa, where he is to attend the state fair and meet with the state’s GOP honchos.Just what is Mike Pence doing? Laying the groundwork for a potential presidential run in 2024, that’s what. Iowa and New Hampshire are both early voting states in the Republican presidential primary, and stops by prospective candidates such as Pence are not out of the ordinary. Where Pence would fit into the 2024 Republican field is unclear. Donald Trump is seen as champing at the bit to return to the campaign trail, and reportedly has little love for his former number two. If Pence hopes to capture the support of Republicans who have tired of Trump, he may have to vie against Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who could tailor his campaign to the same voters. Then there’s Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican who was last night ousted from the House by the Wyoming GOP in favor of a Trump-backed attorney. If Pence opts to run as a defiantly anti-Trump Republican, she would be his chief opponent, assuming she decides to aim for the presidency.But that’s not all. Pence could find himself up against Trump’s former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, or his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, or even South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem, not to mention conservative senators like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, or Tom Cotton. In a field with this much potential for crowding, one can see why Pence may want an early start.Mike Pence’s visit to New Hampshire has added to speculation that he may be mulling a presidential run in 2024. Meanwhile, Liz Cheney announced she was considering her own bid for the White House as a defiantly anti-Trump Republican, hours after GOP voters in Wyoming rejected her bid to continue as the state’s House representative. Here’s a rundown of today’s news:
Donald Trump sure seems to like a Wall Street Journal column suggesting a Republican-led Congress or White House could retaliate against Democrats over the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.
A poll from Wisconsin indicates Democrats may have momentum in the state’s Senate race, though the contest for the governorship appears to be tightening.
Rudy Giuliani has appeared before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is investigating attempts to meddle with the state’s election results in 2020. He has been told he is a target of the investigation.
The memoir of Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser Jared Kushner was torn apart by The New York Times’ book reviewer.
A court ruling allowed the Biden administration to again pause new oil and gas drilling leases on federal land.
Donald Trump and his political action committee have promoted a Wall Street Journal column suggesting that Republicans could seek revenge against Democratic politicians for the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago.Attorney general Merrick Garland’s “raid has made even the highest political figures fair prosecutorial game, and the media’s new standard is that the department can’t be questioned as it goes about ensuring ‘no one is above the law.’ Let’s see how that holds when a future Republican Justice Department starts raiding the homes of Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, James Comey and John Brennan,” writes Kimberley A. Strassel, a member of the Journal’s editorial board.She also posits that a GOP-controlled House, which could come as soon as next year, might create their own select committees similar to the one investigating the January 6 attack, and perhaps subpoena Democratic lawmakers. “What goes around always comes around. What went around this week will come around hard,” Strassel wrote in the piece published August 11.Trump was apparently a fan of the column:Trump reposts an op-ed describing the likelihood of payback — such as raiding homes of Biden, Clinton, Comey etc — if he retakes the White House. pic.twitter.com/v067yHOK69— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 17, 2022
As was the Trump War Room, managed by his Save America PAC:ICYMI: “The Payback for Mar-a-Lago Will Be Brutal”https://t.co/58YugoDe8m— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) August 17, 2022
Today, he’s in New Hampshire, promoting conservative policies while calling on fellow Republicans to hold off on attacking the FBI and signaling a willingness to talk to the January 6 committee. Next, he’ll be in Iowa, where he is to attend the state fair and meet with the state’s GOP honchos.Just what is Mike Pence doing? Laying the groundwork for a potential presidential run in 2024, that’s what. Iowa and New Hampshire are both early voting states in the Republican presidential primary, and stops by prospective candidates such as Pence are not out of the ordinary. Where Pence would fit into the 2024 Republican field is unclear. Donald Trump is seen as champing at the bit to return to the campaign trail, and reportedly has little love for his former number two. If Pence hopes to capture the support of Republicans who have tired of Trump, he may have to vie against Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who could tailor his campaign to the same voters. Then there’s Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican who was last night ousted from the House by the Wyoming GOP in favor of a Trump-backed attorney. If Pence opts to run as a defiantly anti-Trump Republican, she would be his chief opponent, assuming she decides to aim for the presidency.But that’s not all. Pence could find himself up against Trump’s former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, or his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, or even South Dakota’s governor Kristi Noem, not to mention conservative senators like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, or Tom Cotton. In a field with this much potential for crowding, one can see why Pence may want an early start.Planned Parenthood plans to spend a record $50 million ahead of November’s midterm elections, pouring money into contests where access to abortion will be on the ballot.The effort, which breaks the group’s previous $45 million spending record set in 2020, comes about two months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It will be waged by the organization’s political and advocacy arms and will focus on governor’s offices, U.S. Senate seats and legislative races in nine states where abortion rights could be restricted or expanded, depending on the outcome at the ballot.The historic proportions of the midterm campaign, when less money is usually spent than in presidential races, were made possible by a torrent of money raised after the decision by the high court’s new conservative majority, touching off a tectonic shift in abortion politics. For the first time, Republicans who have long campaigned against abortion will face voters on an issue that is no longer hypothetical and carries real life consequences.​​As Republicans move towards an election season rife with internal disagreements and mixed public opinions on exceptions in abortion bans such as instances of rape and incest, many rightwing lawmakers are finding it increasingly difficult to implement cohesive abortion policies.The phenomenon has been starkly illustrated by Kansas’s referendum a few weeks ago, where the usually Republican state voted to keep abortion protections in its constitution, providing an unexpected boost from red state America to the abortion rights movement.Planned Parenthood says its spending will help remind voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin what’s at stake in a bid to drive turnout by Democratic and independent voters.“Who wins in these midterm elections will determine whether a state has access to abortion and potentially determine whether we will face a national abortion ban,” said Jenny Lawson, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes. “We will be clear about who is on which side.”Planned Parenthood says it intends to contact 6 million voters through door knocking, phone calls, digital advertising, mailers and radio ads.It also is launching a website, takecontrol2022.com.According to a survey conducted between 27 June and 4 July by the Pew Research center, a majority of the American public disapproves of the supreme court’s decision to overturn Roe: 57% of adults disapprove of the court’s decision, including 43% who strongly disapprove, and 41% of American adults approve while 25% strongly approve of the court’s decision.The survey also found that 62% of Americans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, and 36% of Americans say that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. Only 38% of Republicans say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, marking a 1-point decrease from poll results obtained in 2007.A poll from Wisconsin is adding credence to the idea that Democrats are gaining strength in congressional races.The survey from Marquette University Law School shows the Democratic nominee for Senate, Mandela Barnes, up by 51 percent against Republican incumbent Ron Johnson’s 44 percent. The race for governor is much closer, with Democratic incumbent Tony Evers coming in with 45 percent of support against Tim Michels, the Republican challenging him, whose preference was at 43 percent.The data confirms increased momentum for Barnes, who was polling at 46 percent against Johnson’s 44 percent in a mid-June survey. In the governor’s race, it suggest tightening, as Evers was up by 48 percent against Michels’ 41 percent in the earlier poll.It appears Harriet Hageman, the attorney who ousted Liz Cheney from the House of Representatives in the Wyoming Republican party primary, has no interest in talking to her predecessor.Politico reports that Cheney attempted to concede in a phone call to Hageman, but ended up leaving a voice message:NEW: Rep. Liz Cheney tells me her concession call to Harriet Hageman ended up being a “clear and direct” voicemail that she left before she went on stage last night, after trying multiple times to get in touch w/ her. Cheney says she still has not heard anything back.— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) August 17, 2022
“I left her a message before I went on stage — again, after we tried three different times to reach her,” Cheney told me in an interview today. “And that was that was that.”— Olivia Beavers (@Olivia_Beavers) August 17, 2022
As afternoon turned to evening on January 6, 2021, the US Capitol Police received the following message from the US Secret Service: “Good afternoon, The US Secret Service is passing notification to the US Capitol Police regarding discovery of a social media threat directed toward Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”The Secret Service sent along a social media post containing threats to lawmakers, including Pelosi. But according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which obtained Secret Service emails containing the warning, the agency had first learned about it two days before the insurrection at the Capitol, during which many of Donald Trump’s supporters made no secret of their desire for revenge against lawmakers who were a thorn in his side.The investigation adds to the questions swirling around the Secret Service. The agency is embroiled in a scandal after it was revealed it allowed agents’ text messages from around the time of the attack to be deleted, prompting calls in Congress for accountability.Secret Service watchdog suppressed memo on January 6 texts erasureRead moreFlorida’s Republican governor Ron DeSantis is facing a federal lawsuit from a state attorney he suspended earlier this month for “wokeness”.In a Twitter post, Andrew Warren said he filed papers in Tallahassee this morning, calling his removal as state attorney for Hillsborough county “a blatant abuse of power”. Today we took action against Ron DeSantis’ abuse of power and unlawful suspension. Please join us in this fight at https://t.co/mebZt8It8i #DefendDemocracyNow pic.twitter.com/ekluzexc2H— Andrew Warren (@AndrewWarrenFL) August 17, 2022
DeSantis suspended Warren on 4 August for “neglect of duty” after the twice-elected official said he would not enforce the state’s new 15-week abortion ban. The governor said Warren was following a “woke agenda,” although some analysts question the legality of the move based on an action that hasn’t taken place yet.“The governor has broken two laws. He’s violated my first amendment rights by retaliating against me for speaking out on abortion and transgender rights, and he’s violated the Florida constitution by removing me from office without any legal justification,” Warren said in the post.There was no immediate reaction from DeSantis’s office.The Orlando Sentinel noted that DeSantis, seen as a likely candidate for the Republican party’s 2024 presidential nomination, has taken no action against so-called “constitutional” sheriffs who say they won’t enforce certain Florida gun laws.Former vice-president Mike Pence asked fellow Republicans to stop lashing out at the FBI over their recent search of Donald Trump’s house, reports the Associated Press.During an event in New Hampshire, Pence called demands from Republicans to defund the FBI “just as wrong” as previous calls from activists to divest funding from the police for other needs. “The Republican Party is the party of law and order,” said Pence. “Our party stands with the men and women who stand on the thin blue line at the federal and state and local level, and these attacks on the FBI must stop. Calls to defund the FBI are just as wrong as calls to defund the police.” Pence added Republicans can criticize attorney general Merrick Garland and ask for more transparency around the search without condemning the FBI. FBI officials have said that law enforcement have encountered a number of Trump supporters who seem ready to attack the FBI or those they believe are investigating Trump too much, following the search. The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced today that the agency will undergo a massive restructuring following failures during the Covid-19 pandemic. CDC director Rochelle P. Walensky announced the planned changes during a meeting with senior staff today, acknowledging the CDC’s botched response to Covid-19, reported the New York Times. “For 75 years, C.D.C. and public health have been preparing for Covid-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations,” said Walensky on the agency’s shortcomings. “My goal is a new, public health, action-oriented culture at C.D.C. that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication and timeliness.”Changes will be aimed at increasing the CDC’s ability to faster respond to major health crises and restoring public trust. Critics of the CDC say that during the Covid-19 pandemic, the agency failed to scale up testing, vaccination efforts, and data collection. The CDC has also been accused of publishing ineffective and contradictory health advice on Covid-19. Similar issues have been raised about the CDC’s response to the spread of monkey pox in the US. Yesterday’s elections in Wyoming and Alaska have ousted Liz Cheney from her House seat while giving Sarah Palin a shot at getting her own spot in the chamber. But Cheney has vowed to keep fighting Donald Trump and his allies, a task at which many before her have failed.Here’s a rundown of what has happened so far today:
Former vice-president Mike Pence signaled a degree of openness to talking to the January 6 committee, though with several caveats.
Rudy Giuliani has appeared before a special grand jury in Atlanta that is investigating attempts to meddle with the state’s election results in 2020. He has been told he is a target of the investigation.
The memoir of Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser Jared Kushner was torn apart by The New York Times’ book reviewer.
A court ruling allowed the Biden administration to again pause new oil and gas drilling leases on federal land.
While Alaska’s elections were held yesterday, it may take till the end of the month to determine the winner of closely fought races, such as the special election for the state’s vacant House of Representatives seat.According to the Anchorage Daily News, “As of 2 a.m. Wednesday, the Alaska Division of Elections had counted over 150,000 ballots in the race that will determine Alaska’s next representative in Congress, in a special election to replace 49-year Rep. Don Young, who died unexpectedly in March. The Division will continue to accept ballots until Aug. 31, as long as they were postmarked on or before election day. Once the last ballots are counted — if no candidate crosses the 50% threshold needed to win under the state’s new ranked choice voting system — the candidate in last place will be eliminated and the second-place votes of that candidate’s supporters will be redistributed.”Sarah Palin may nearing a return to the national political stage, Maanvi Singh reports, after Alaska voters gave her decent support in last night’s special election:Sarah Palin looks set to be on the ballot in November’s general election after the former governor of Alaska and ex vice-presidential candidate clinched one of four spots vying for a seat in the US House, according to the Associated Press.Palin, who rose to fame more than a decade ago as John McCain’s running mate, advanced to the general election along with her two challengers, Nick Begich III, a tech millionaire backed by the Alaska Republican party, and Mary Peltola, a former state legislator and Democrat. It was too early to call the fourth spot.Palin, Peltola and Begich are competing for Alaska’s only House seat, formerly occupied by Don Young, who died in March. The trio were also competing in a special election to serve the remainder of Young’s term, which ends early next year.Sarah Palin advances to November election for Alaska House seatRead more More

What will it mean for Trump – and Biden – if Liz Cheney runs in 2024?Trump Republican adversary could make a symbolic impact in the ‘moderate’ party lane – but she could also take votes from Biden When Liz Cheney left the podium at a Wyoming ranch on Tuesday night, clapped and cheered by supporters, a Tom Petty song boomed out beneath the Teton mountains: “Well, I won’t back down / No, I won’t back down / You could stand me up at the gates of hell / But I won’t back down.”The woman who has emerged as Donald Trump’s most implacable Republican adversary had suffered a landslide defeat in a primary election to decide Wyoming’s only seat in the US House of Representatives.But unlike the former president, who loves to play victim, Cheney refused to dwell in political martyrdom after her act of self-sacrifice. In a 15-minute speech beside a dozen hay bales, a red vintage Chevrolet truck and four US national flags, she made clear that, while Trump had won the battle, the war for the soul of the party rages on.“This primary election is over,” Cheney acknowledged to a crowd that, with aching symbolism, included her father, former vice-president Dick Cheney. “But now the real work begins.”She invoked Abraham Lincoln, who lost congressional elections before ascending to the presidency and preserving the union. The vice-chair of the congressional January 6 committee warned that Trump and his enablers pose an existential threat to democracy and urged Americans of all stripes to unite.To many in the crowd – who had wined and dined in a hospitality tent with a country and western band for entertainment – it sounded awfully like the launch of a presidential campaign.Heath Mayo, 32, a lawyer, said: “On the question about the future of the party, there are few people making an argument counter to the prevailing Trumpism argument. She’s the only one that can make it. I hope she runs for president in 2024. She needs to be on that stage making that argument again, even if she loses. Keep making the argument.”Carol Adelman, 76, who hired a 22-year-old Cheney for the US Agency for International Development, said that “of course” she would like see Cheney run for the White House in 2024. Alan Reid, 60, who works in finance, agreed: “Who else? Who’s better? I don’t see anybody from any party that shows the leadership that Liz shows.”Cheney’s political future became a little clearer on Wednesday when she launched a leadership political action committee with the name “The Great Task”. Her spokesperson told the Politico website: “In coming weeks, Liz will be launching an organization to educate the American people about the ongoing threat to our Republic.”In a TV interview, Cheney confirmed that she is “thinking about” a run for president in 2024 and will make decision “in the coming months”.As the fall of the Cheney dynasty in Wyoming demonstrated, she would stand almost no chance of winning a Republican primary. But if the field is crowded and divided, for example between Trump, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and former vice-president Mike Pence, she could make a symbolic impact in the “moderate” lane.And as the January 6 hearings have shown, Cheney would relish nothing more than standing on a debate stage with Trump and prosecuting the case against him directly in prime time.Alternatively, the three-time congresswoman could run as an independent candidate in the general election. This could peel crucial moderate votes away from Trump in battleground states, helping his Democratic opponent, presumably President Joe Biden.But there might also be a danger that she would take votes from Biden, in particular those crossover Republicans who supported him in 2020 because of their hostility to Trump. Democrats would be anxious to avoid a repeat of 2000 when the third party “spoiler” Ralph Nader was blamed for costing Al Gore the election.Cheney, who has vowed to do whatever it takes to keep Trump out of the Oval Office, would be equally wary of such a scenario unless, as some critics suspect, ambition and ego are competing with her nobler impulses.Robert Talisse, an expert in contemporary political philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote in an email: “If Cheney seeks the GOP nomination against Trump, she’ll be crushed. If Trump’s not seeking the nomination, he’ll still get to select the nominee.“If she runs as an independent against Trump, she’ll probably siphon off a significant number of conservative voters who won’t be able to bring themselves to vote for a Democrat, but also can’t bring themselves to vote for Trump.”The calculation would take place in the context that reports of Trump’s weakening grip on the Republican party have been greatly exaggerated. She is one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him: eight have lost their primary or retired, while only two stand a chance of surviving to the next Congress.Indeed, as Cheney exits the stage, at least for now, Sarah Palin, who paved the way for Trump, is making a comeback. On Tuesday, with his endorsement, she advanced to the November general election in the race for Alaska’s lone House seat. The journeys of these two fiftysomething women neatly sum up where the Republican party is at.But as Cheney noted in her remarks, pro-Trump election deniers are rising all over the country. It has proved a winning formula in primaries that reward the loudest voices but could yet backfire on the party in the midterm elections, where centrist voters are put off by extremism. Republicans may blow their chances in the Senate with several radical candidates who are heavy on celebrity but light on gravitas.For now, Trump will feel that Tuesday demonstrated that revenge is a dish best served Maga. But Adam Kinzinger, Cheney’s Republican colleague on the January 6 committee, is confident that she will not yield. Echoing Tom Petty, he told the MSNBC network: “She’s very determined, very dogged, and she will chase Donald Trump to the gates of hell.”TopicsLiz CheneyUS politicsRepublicansUS elections 2024US midterm elections 2022analysisReuse this content More

Harriet Hageman: who is the Republican who beat Liz Cheney?The lawyer appears to be the ideal candidate to carry Trump’s rightwing banner into the midterms – but she hasn’t always been aboard his train A conservative lawyer with a passion for thwarting environmentalists, Harriet Hageman would appear to be an ideal candidate to carry Donald Trump’s rightwing banner into November’s midterm elections.On Tuesday night she beat the incumbent and member of Wyoming’s political royalty, Liz Cheney, for the thinly populated western state’s solitary seat in the US House of Representatives.Liz Cheney considers run for president after Republican primary defeatRead moreAfter trouncing Cheney, Trump’s most vocal critic within the Republican party, Hageman, 59, has a clear run at election success. In an overwhelmingly red state, Cheney defeated her Democratic challenger in 2020 by a margin of almost three votes to one.Hageman, however, has not always been such an enthusiastic passenger aboard the Trump train.Her stance has shifted from calling him “the weakest candidate” in the 2016 primaries, when she attempted to help maneuver the Texas senator Ted Cruz into the Republican presidential nomination, to “the greatest president of my lifetime” when she eagerly embraced Trump’s endorsement as his chosen candidate to topple Cheney, his latest bete noire.Neither is this her first foray into politics. She was a losing candidate in Wyoming’s 2018 contest for state governor, finishing a distant third to the eventual winner, Mark Gordon, and one other in the Republican primary, with barely 20% of the vote.Hageman’s political positions are rooted in the minutiae of her career as a trial lawyer representing Wyoming’s ranchers, and advocating for energy industries against federal protections for water, land and the endangered gray wolf.A 1989 graduate of the University of Wyoming’s college of law, her most successful case, according to the New York Times, was persuading a judge in 2003 to block regulations from Bill Clinton’s presidency protecting millions of acres of national forests from road-building, mining and other development.She is a vocal supporter of the fossil fuel industry, telling supporters at a campaign event earlier this month that coal was an “affordable, clean, acceptable resource that we all should be using”.She has previously also angered activist groups including Defenders of the Wild for her positions on endangered species.In 2017, as an attorney for the ultra-conservative Mountain States Legal Foundation, she praised a US appeals court for cutting through “emotional arguments” and upholding the delisting of gray wolves.The following year, the Sierra Club accused Wyoming of “waging a war” on wolves through hunting and allowing a “scorched earth” policy that threatened the species’ recovery from near-oblivion.Hageman was late in her campaign in converting to Trump’s false assertion that his 2020 election defeat by Joe Biden was fraudulent.In her victory speech on Tuesday night, she said: “Wyoming has spoken on behalf of everyone who is concerned that the game is becoming more and more rigged against them.”TopicsUS midterm elections 2022WyomingUS politicsRepublicansDonald TrumpLiz CheneyfeaturesReuse this content More

Liz Cheney considers run for president after Republican primary defeatWyoming congresswoman says ‘It’s something I’m thinking about’ after losing to Trump-backed challenger Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney has announced she is considering her own run for the White House in an all-out effort to prevent Donald Trump from winning another term as US president.Liz Cheney loses Wyoming Republican primary to Trump-endorsed rivalRead moreCheney decisively lost her Republican primary race on Tuesday night and will lose her seat in the US Congress.The Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman beat Cheney by almost 40 points as Wyoming voters took revenge for her voting to impeach Trump and for focusing on her role on the January 6 House select committee.The panel, of which Cheney is vice-chair and one of only two Republicans, is investigating Trump’s role in fomenting the insurrection at the US Capitol by his supporters on 6 January 2021, in a vain attempt to stay in office following his defeat by Joe Biden.Cheney was asked on NBC’s Today show on Wednesday morning whether she was thinking of running for president. She did not respond to the question directly but, when pressed a second time, admitted she was.“It’s something I’m thinking about, and I’ll make a decision in the coming months,” she said.On Tuesday night she said she would “do whatever it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office”. After her loss to Hageman by almost 60,000 votes was confirmed, aides revealed the former House number three planned to set up her own political action committee.“In coming weeks, Liz will be launching an organization to educate the American people about the ongoing threat to our republic, and to mobilize a unified effort to oppose any Donald Trump campaign for president,” Cheney spokesperson Jeremy Adler told Politico Playbook.NBC confirmed on Wednesday that it will be named The Great Task, which was the title of Cheney’s final pitch to Wyoming voters, and features in the closing sentence of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.On Wednesday, Cheney laid out her priorities for the next few months before leaving the House in January.Beyond “representing the people of Wyoming”, she said: “We have a tremendous amount of work left to do on the January 6 committee. And also, though, I’m going to be making sure that people all around this country understand the stakes of what we’re facing, understand the extent to which we’ve now got one major political party, my party, which has really become a cult of personality.“We’ve got to get this party back to a place where we’re embracing the values and the principles on which it was founded. And talking about fundamental issues of civics, fundamental issues of what does it mean to be a constitutional republic.”Cheney, daughter of former Republican vice-president Dick Cheney, attacked both Trump and the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, the architect of her ousting from the party’s House leadership in May 2021 after she denounced the former president’s false claims of a stolen election. She expressed her belief that “the Republican party today is in very bad shape”.“Donald Trump has betrayed Republican voters. He’s lied to them. Those who support him have lied to them and and they’re using people’s patriotism against them,” she said.“They’re preying on people’s patriotism. Kevin McCarthy made his decision a few weeks after January 6, knowing what he knew about Donald Trump’s role in the assault on the Capitol, when he went to Mar-a-Lago and said we’re going to welcome him back into the party. To me, that’s indefensible.“I believe that Donald Trump continues to pose a very grave threat, a risk to our republic, and I think defeating him is going to require a broad and united front of Republicans, Democrats and independents. That’s what I intend to be a part of.”To some in the crowd of supporters on Tuesday night – gathered in an open field beside a red vintage Chevrolet truck, four US national flags, a dozen hay bales and a hospitality tent – it already sounded like the launch of a presidential campaign.They welcomed the prospect out of both principle and pragmatism: Cheney would have little chance of winning but could peel crucial votes away from Trump.Heath Mayo, 32, a lawyer, said: “There are few people making an argument counter to the prevailing Trumpism argument. She’s the only one that can make it. I certainly hope she’s not done. I hope she runs for president in 2024.”Carol Adelman, who hired a 22-year-old Cheney for the US Agency for International Development, noted that the congresswoman received a John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award from the JFK Library earlier this year. “We need that, not the profiles in cowardice that the Republican party has today. Ultimately, they will go.”Alan Reid, 60, who works in finance, said of a possible presidential run: “Who else? Who’s better? I don’t see anybody from any party that shows the leadership that Liz shows.”But a Cheney candidacy could pose a dilemma for Democrats who recall that she voted in line with Trump’s position 93% of the time during his presidency, according to the FiveThirtyEight website.Marci Shaver, a registered Democrat, switched to Republican in 2016 so she could vote against Cheney; this time she switched to Republican so she could vote for Cheney.She explained: “I was so impressed with her integrity on the committee and the way she has stood firm, knowing damn well she was going to lose this election. I was born and raised here and this is the kind of integrity that Wyomingites, when I was growing, totally respected. For them to dismiss that in this election just breaks my heart.”Bill Sniffin, publisher emeritus of the Cowboy State Daily news site in Wyoming, wrote in a blogpost: “Liz Cheney’s concession speech sounds a lot more like the announcement of someone planning to run for president in 2024 than an admission of defeat back here in 2022.”He added: “This is not the end of Liz Cheney. This is the beginning. Stay tuned.”Trump remains the favorite among Republicans for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsUS elections 2024newsReuse this content More

Biden bounces back: Inside 19 August Guardian Weekly Joe Biden rides high. Plus, 75 years since the Partition of India
Get the Guardian Weekly delivered to your home address Joe Biden’s political capital is riding high after a key plank of his legislative programme came to fruition. But the US president has greeted this “hot streak” in his usual quiet fashion. For his predecessor, it was a decidedly rough week after his home was raided by the FBI, looking for official documents that Donald Trump had held on to after his presidential term had ended. The reaction was a typical explosion of rage and accusation. David Smith, our Washington bureau chief, follows this compare-and-contrast theme to see which of the two men, who at this juncture still look likely to face each other again in the 2024 presidential election, came out on top.We report on two anniversaries in one region this week as Monday marked 75 years since the Partition of India, as well as a year since Afghanistan returned to Taliban rule. Our world affairs editor, Julian Borger, examines the extent to which Pakistan and India are still scarred by a final, brutal colonial flourish that divided communities, while Stefanie Glinski’s photo essay from Kabul focuses on how women’s rights have been eroded in the past year.The shocking news of the stabbing of Salman Rushdie reminded the world of the importance of free speech and how the efforts of ideological fanatics to curb it must be resisted. As Margaret Atwood writes on our Opinion pages, attacks on writers are a cheap populist distraction, while on the news pages we look at how Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses triggered hatred against him.Leading our features section this week is a story about a reversal in reputation. Peru-based writer Dan Collyns explains how Bolivian tin baron Moritz Hochschild, had been viewed as an exploitative oligarch until the discovery of a cache of papers revealed his role in saving thousands of Jews from Nazi Germany and how he used his power to overcome antisemitism in the ruling elites. And then we take a full and frank look at the growing popularity of naturism in Britain. The photographs are necessarily coy, with artfully placed props, but writer Sally Howard takes the pastime as seriously as its practitioners. We hope you enjoy this week’s issue.Get the magazine delivered to you at homeTopicsUS politicsInside Guardian WeeklyDonald TrumpJoe BidenSalman RushdieFreedom of speechIndiaAfghanistanReuse this content More